onfocus

Wednesday Links

When things turn to garbage I guess I turn to Wikipedia. A couple more links I've been thinking about recently: False equivalence and Slippary slope. Have journalists seen these? Because I feel like they haven't seen these.

Tuesday Links

I have a slew of links to share, but it doesn't feel like a good time to share a slew of links. The daily news feels like a daily test of the paradox of tolerance and I've been thinking about that quite a bit. Also, brushing up on the concept of hate speech has been helpful for me.

Wall Street Journal: Why Vinyl's Boom Is Over - Two of my favorite artists provide a snapshot of where vinyl production is today.

Ask Polly: It Seems Like My Friends Don’t Like Me - "We have to find a way to bring the sharp edges and troubling complications and glorious moments of joy into a world that communicates with a series of popping-Champagne emoji and eye roll memes."

Tom Swarfties

"I trained a neural network to write Tom Swifties," Tom said artificially. But seriously, after "success" with Oregon Placenames I wanted to try something more complex. The short, repeating format of Tom Swifties seemed like something it could tackle. I found a good compilation and set to work training. (Start with the compilation if you haven't seen Tom Swifties before. You'll get the idea after a handful.)

I have a feeling I need to look into the whole GPU thing for processing because I've been training the AI nonstop on AWS for a few days now and while it has come a long way, it's still not speaking English. But the Swifty form is there and I think it has some interesting things to share. Here are a few:

"Allye! Peen!" said Tom guiltorively.

"I had a modight", said Tom inderitively.

"I've not beat'd will we I sfong that take ban hisse", said Tom bardingly.

"Let's go! wrong wo", said Tom posthalicteitingly.

"Looks oke run shats", Tom repocked.

"I more for owlanimors!" said Tom jauntly.

"I haven to reperent", said Tom barch-oned.

"I'm going to have sow manartioutive", said Tom pridely.

"I like that a get a tround of chairs?" asked Tom consically.

"You're faloamintica", Tom canied consentingly.

"I don't play due the stragumed glan to the botheric", said Tom rasmitally.

"It's tere takes my pief?" asked Tom centatically.

I notice that it's putting asked with the questions. I wonder if the adverb will eventually match the subject in the quote. I'll keep training, but it seems to get slower as it gets more complex. "I wonder if I could tap into more processing power," pb said cloudily.

Fake Oregon Placenames

I found a list of real Oregon placenames at the US Board on Geographic Names. I did a round of A.I. training with the raw data and found the output too noisy. So I did a little data massaging and gave it another shot, this time with cleaner results.

I set the whole thing up on a free AWS instance with the torch-rnn docker image. It was a snap. A slow snap. It would be faster with more processing power.

Without further setup, plan your next camping trip and imagine the vistas you'll see in such artificially imagined Oregon places as:

Thkewood Meadows

Cookstop Lake

Thedrel Springs Cemetery

Water Reservoir

Rogah Butte

Newar Creek

Willaning Creek

Dazian

Booper Summit

Pister Creek Ranch Spring

Josspor Ridge

Bickmass Log Pond

Trout Bucktuby

Monnnit Hellant Plant Creek

Pitter Cip Number One

Seven Creek

Giam Creek

Hemil M Creek

Hug Waterhole

Dukapin Meadows

Bensbush Creek

Malow Creek

Lattle Lake Recreation Meadows

Mule Park

Road Ranch

Bruck Creek

Gregley Park Recreation Site

Forent Well

Kench Bed Reservoir

Indian Slide

Sinkhawk Trail

Tondyle Canyon

Spilling Pond

Syn Reservoir

Pieson Reservoir

Thirn Mountain

Fence and Swalich

Lower Spring Cemetery

Bolard Creek

Coney Butte Park

Skihino Peak

Laix Spring

Clenmill Creek

Oshers Forest

Fork Slow Spring

This is a random linear sampling from potentially infinite output. It might be funnier to go through with an editorial eye and find the most amusing, but it's getting late and I have a trip to Fence and Swalich to plan.

On the Records

My dad has an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock and he just started a classic rock blog called On the Records. He's writing brief but dense artist summaries that are easier to digest than a wikipedia entry. He's also adding personal stories about his relationship with music. His post From Records to Playlists reminded me just how far music technology has progressed in a short period of time. Blogs! They're still neat. If you like music that was mostly delivered via vinyl you should meet my dad.

Link Pile, Early July

It has been a while, dear reader. I was about to declare link bankruptcy, delete all to-share links, and start again with a clean slate. However, in the rush to find the latest and greatest links I assume you might have missed one of these non-organized gems from the past arbitrary amount of time. Or maybe you'll rediscover a popular link from weeks ago and see it from a wiser, weeks-older perspective. Anyway, here's Wonderwall (of links):

Oregon Country Fair

I had a great time with friends at the Oregon Country Fair yesterday. It's a fun event with an amazing atmosphere. This year I mostly took atmospheric pictures with an old Lensbaby selective-focus lens. Sometimes it's good to go lo-fi.